Álvaro Siza reflects

I’m standing in front of a grey metal street door. Next to the intercom, the names of Portugal’s two Pritzker Prize winners, friends and colleagues for decades: Eduardo Souto de Moura (1st floor) and Álvaro Siza Vieira (2nd floor). It’s a few days before Christmas 2024 and I’m meeting the latter of these two monstres sacrés.

‘Siza’ is a national treasure in Portugal, revered internationally for his ‘poetic Modernism’, spare, luminous projects that place humanity at their centre: private and social housing, national pavilions, universities and museums, in Europe, Asia and America. Through the window of his office, we see the Douro River, where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. His reflective conversation is punctuated by frequent rapid drawings, visual annotations.

In 2024, when the architect was 90, the Álvaro Siza Wing in Porto was inaugurated, extending and complementing Álvaro Siza’s original 1999 Serralves Museum commission. This new project creates a dynamic dialogue between architecture and nature. “The park is classified, with trees more than 100 years old and the new building had to be parallel to the original building. You could say the classified trees helped design the building. If I don’t have restrictions, it can be too vague.”

The conversation turns to Álvaro Siza’s student days in the 1950s. “When I was a student, there were two schools of architecture, Porto and Lisbon. They didn’t talk to each other. Power was centred in Lisbon, with very little freedom, while Porto was peripheral. With the defeat of Fascism, after World War II, the government had to accept small concessions, but the real opening came with the 1974 Revolution.

*Fundação de Serralves, Museum of Contemporary Art, Álvaro Siza Wing, Porto, Portugal – Photos: © Fernando Guerra | FG+SG*

“In Porto, new teachers brought in disciplines that had not previously existed, such as Sociology and Geography. The architectural schools had some excellent professors, trained as architects, who had, however, been living 50 years of frustration.” The policy of the Salazar regime was to maintain the country poor, without trade unions, exercising absolute control through poverty.

“I wanted to be a sculptor. But my father was against this. Sculpture was considered bohemian, without money. So I began to study architecture, but without real interest. My professor said, ‘I see you have no idea what architecture is, old or new. I will give you some advice: buy some books or reviews’. In a bookshop, I found four numbers of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. There was one on Gropius, another on Richard Neutra (those beautiful towns in California…), and finally, Alvar Aalto, a big shock. I hadn’t imagined architecture could be like this. Suddenly I was fully interested. My ignorance when I entered university was, in a way, good for me. I didn’t have preconceptions about architecture – I was a virgin.”

“The first time I went outside Iberia, I was already 43. We just didn’t travel.” This first trip was to Paris, familiar through contacts that had begun with the Revolution.

Álvaro Siza’s travels to meet other architects and discover their buildings became increasingly frequent: Italy (Aldo Rossi), Sweden and Finland where he was influenced by the landscapes, Greece, a visit to Machu Picchu in Mexico, Brazil, America (Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright), France (Le Corbusier), and England (James Stirling). “The impact of these architects was very strong.” Álvaro Siza began teaching at the Architectural Faculty of the University of Porto in 1966 and also taught at Harvard University.

“I had got to know many of the best European architects attracted to Portugal to see the effects of the Revolution. They participated in thinking about the task of architecture, after 50 years of isolation. It was a hopeful moment, with the idea very strong in Europe of inclusion and working for everybody, not just the rich. Sociology and the possibility of changing lives were important. We found we didn’t need the Pope or the King.”

The architect is recognized as playing an important role in innovative social housing focused on users’ needs, integrating open-plan design and interior detailing, far ahead of the time. For a few years, this writer was privileged to live in an apartment in Álvaro Siza’s seminal Bairro da Bouça social housing project, built in 1975 in Porto under the SAAL housing programme. “In Porto at the end of the 50s, half the population lived in ilhas (‘islands’ of extremely modest housing).”

Álvaro Siza describes the window placement on an Adolf Loos building in Prague that confirmed his understanding of the porous relationship between inside and outside. “It’s about creating a magnetic relationship between interior and exterior, creating a miracle.” He is concerned that recognition for the architect is not always respected. “It has become dangerously normal to design a project and, rather than the architect finishing the interior and designing furniture, to say ‘no, we don’t want you for this’, and to call a decorator.”

He mentions “architect friends in England”, particularly a longstanding friendship with influential architect and critic Kenneth Frampton. Still working, Álvaro Siza is currently designing a house in London for a Portuguese client.

“I’ve been working in China, Korea and Japan for the last 15 years. Sometimes the clients come here. They are very good clients, open to discussion – they send me ceramics and speak with real enthusiasm, fundamental for architecture.” Álvaro Siza has designed five museums in China and Korea, including the China Design Museum, Hangzhou, built to house 7,000 original pieces from the Bauhaus.

Does he consider it more challenging to design a project in a foreign country? “In a way, it is more difficult because you don’t know the culture. When you work outside your country, everything is new and this is a stimulus: landscape, architectural context, historical background … Working abroad, I have rediscovered the pleasure of practising architecture. Without pleasure, it’s the worst profession imaginable. With enthusiasm, it’s the best.”

First published Portugal Resident, 'Portugal Forward', January 2025

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